The bench said the offence the four committed falls in the category of the rarest of the rare.

The trial court had on September 13, 2013 awarded death penalty of four accused.

Pointing to the “volcano” of protests in Delhi and the “need… to satisfy the rage of society”, the Delhi High Court on Thursday upheld the death sentences awarded to four convicts in the December 16, 2012 gangrape case. Their victim was a 23-year-old woman who, after being gangraped and tortured on board a moving bus in south Delhi, was thrown out along with a male friend. She died 13 days later in a Singapore hospital.

Dismissing the appeals of Mukesh, Akshay Thakur, Pawan Gupta and Vinay Sharma, the bench of Justices Reva Khetrapal and Pratibha Rani said if this “is not the rarest of rare cases, there is likely to be none”.

“The cruel acts committed by the convicts are such that if appropriate sentence is not awarded, rage of the society would not be satisfied and our justicing system would be rendered suspect… Any leniency shown in the matter would not only be misplaced but would give rise to a feeling of private revenge among people, leading to lawlessness in society. The court would not like such a situation to prevail,” the bench said.

The parents of the victim were present in the court room. “We expected this verdict. But we will be satisfied when all of them are hanged,” the victim’s mother told reporters outside the court room.